Before Laura Marks sat down to write about the great American economic crash, she lived it. You’ll be glad to know she did not actually cause it, although the playwright jokes that in a certain way, she symbolized the mindset behind the meltdown.

Marks was working for a big corporate real-estate firm in New York five years ago when, like countless others in the financial sector and beyond, she was laid off.

As tough as the experience was for a working mother of two young girls, Marks has no misgivings about that part of her life now: “I was very grateful to have a job,” she says. “And I learned a lot — stuff I would’ve never learned otherwise, because I really have no natural bent for finance.”

She adds with a laugh: “You know, hiring me to work at a place like that is classic bubble thinking. There’s the problem right there — don’t hire some liberal-arts person!”

If that’s true, the industry likely won’t get a chance to make the same mistake again: Faced with all that involuntary time off, Marks carved out a brand-new career for herself in theater.

The first version of her play “Bethany,” about an economically distressed woman on a mission, got Marks into the drama program at New York’s esteemed Juilliard School. The finished piece now is about to have its West Coast premiere at the Old Globe Theatre, on the heels of a warmly received 2013 off-Broadway debut starring America Ferrera of “Ugly Betty” fame.

Marks, of course, didn’t know at the time it would all work out that way. But she did have a bit of playwriting experience, with one full-length work and a few one-acts under her belt.

And she did have an abiding love for the pursuit, dating back to her elementary-school days at “a sort of hippie Montessori school” in her native Kentucky.

What she knew was she had a story to tell, and an opportunity — an uncertain, nerve-racking one, maybe, but an opportunity nonetheless — to tell it.

A scene from last year's off-Broadway world premiere of Laura Marks' "Bethany." The Old Globe Theatre is about to open the West Coast premiere of the play.— Carol Rosegg

A scene from last year's off-Broadway world premiere of Laura Marks' "Bethany." The Old Globe Theatre is about to open the West Coast premiere of the play.
/ Carol Rosegg

As it happened, Marks’ husband, the actor Ken Marks, also was out of work, having been a cast member of “Hairspray” when it closed that same January. (He eventually would end up in the world-premiere Women’s Project staging of “Bethany,” after a long stint in the musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”)

“Fortunately, we had unemployment insurance, and I had a little severance pay,” the playwright says. “But we were like, ‘Wow, how is this really going to work, with a family of four?’ We had two small children and a mortgage.

“So it was a scary time, but it was also kind of a fertile time to write a play. In a weird way, the unemployment and severance subsidized the time to write this play — and the fear motivated the play.”

Real-life parallels

“Bethany” centers on a struggling car saleswoman named Crystal (played at the Globe by Emmy nominee Jennifer Ferrin of AMC-TV’s “Hell on Wheels”), who is driven to put key pieces of her life back together. (Because the play hinges on some plot twists — one of which involves the title — Marks is reluctant to see too much revealed.)